Two of today’s leading opera stars take to the stage in Jonathan Kent’s new
production of Puccini’s romantic tragedy. No complaints about them.
Perfectly matched physically to their roles and to each other, Latvian
soprano Kristine Opolais and German tenor Jonas Kaufmann look and sound a
dream. Their voices ample and glamorous, they encapsulate the doomed young
lovers in their journey to despair in the wilderness of the final scene. It
is hard to imagine either of the roles better done.

Yet the
production itself disappoints. Kent and his designer Paul Brown emphasise a
seamier view of the story than Puccini, or the writer of the novel on which
his opera is based, would have recognised.

The period is the 1980s.
Manon is no longer moving between true love and the life of a courtesan, but
a sex worker pure and simple; the victimised women of the sex trafficking
trade are her colleagues in a setting that is never anything other than
sleazy. The whole meaning of Manon’s story is coarsened and deprived of
nuance or subtlety. While some of Kent’s best work - his Fairy Queen or Turn
of the Screw for Glyndebourne, for instance - suggested a reliable pair of
hands, this staging suggests that he has lost the plot.

Yet the
stagecraft is immaculate and the acting excellent - if only it were clear
where the action is set and where it is going from scene to scene. The final
two acts are particularly mystifying. There is some applause when the
production team comes on stage at the end. There is also a good deal of
booing.

A mixed evening, then, with musical values once again rising
above an iffy staging. Sir Antonio Pappano conducts a splendid account of
Puccini’s score, with Christopher Maltman and Maurizio Muraro expert in the
secondary roles of Lescaut and Geronte de Revoir respectively.